


Still Life With Vodka

by innerslytherin



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-27
Updated: 2010-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 12:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerslytherin/pseuds/innerslytherin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Emily was a kid, she wanted to be like her parents.  The older she got, the less she thought that was a good idea...and the harder it seemed to escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Life With Vodka

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon.  Possibly triggery subject matters of alcohol and abortion.  I’ve stolen a line from Vienna Teng’s song "Shasta (Carrie’s Song)".

When Emily was ten she wanted to drink vodka tonics like her father and argue with people for a living like her mother.

When Emily was eleven she realized her mother didn’t really argue for a living and her father drank too much.

When Emily was twelve she thought her mother _ought_ to argue for a living and decided her father had the right idea.

When Emily was thirteen she hated her mother for everything, but she hated her father more for leaving.

When Emily was fourteen she drank vodka tonics in public to embarrass her mother and threw up in private just like her father.

When Emily was fifteen she got pregnant.

***

At nine weeks, a fetus had earlobes.  That was a fact Emily still remembered twenty years after learning it.  She couldn’t recite the periodic table of elements or Sonnet 130, but she remembered that at nine weeks, her baby’s (her daughter’s, she always thought) eyelids were fused shut, she could articulate her joints, and she had earlobes.

When Will forced JJ’s hand and made her announce to the team that she was pregnant, Emily was honestly thrilled for her, and the jealousy barely factored in.  She wondered how far along JJ was, if it was planned or unplanned (she was betting on unplanned), and if JJ would keep working.  The look on her best friend’s face told Emily this was definitely _not_ the time to ask.  She hugged JJ and went along with Hotch’s more-than-a-suggestion that they give JJ and Will some privacy.

Then she went upstairs to her hotel room and poured herself exactly one vodka and tonic.  Just one, because they were dealing with multiple unsubs with unknown motivation, and Emily knew better than to do anything that would seriously incapacitate her during a case.  But just the thought of watching her best friend’s body develop with motherhood made Emily’s heart ache, and she was longing for that familiar burst of bitterness on her tongue, the tang of the aftertaste clinging to her teeth.

Rossi checked on her, of course.  Not much slipped past him, and regardless of if he’d noticed her feelings about _him_ , he’d obviously seen something in her reaction to JJ’s news.  Emily had been _too_ happy, maybe, or reacted too quickly.

Whatever it was, she didn’t bother to hide what she was drinking, though she hoped he would think it was just water.  She assured him that she was fine, just a little tired.  He seemed to think she was upset that JJ hadn’t told her.  _You’re not alone in that_ , he commented, hovering in the door.  _Hotch seemed hurt too.  But JJ didn’t mean anything by keeping it a secret.  It’s a big change._

 _Did you ever try to have kids?_ she asked impulsively.

 _Me?  Hell no.  My first wife..._   He grinned faintly, a hint of nostalgia in the expression, maybe some wistfulness.  _Yeah.  She wanted a big family.  We both did._   He shook his head and looked away.  _Wasn’t in the cards_.

Something must have shown in her expression when he glanced back at her.  He shrugged.  _We move on.  Life happens._   He leaned in close and she was too shocked to pull away as he brushed a kiss against her forehead.  _Go to bed, Prentiss.  And...sweet dreams_.

***

Less than a year later she stood in a desolate lot where a house had once stood, weeds straggling up through the gravel, and knew she was sharing those dreams with him.

Not much slipped past him, after all, and he was Catholic too.  He knew about guilt and he knew about the sanctity of life.  Maybe she’d thrown away a hell of a lot of what the church tried to cram down her throat, but she’d never let go of that.  She hadn’t just had an abortion; she’d killed her baby.  And it was something that would haunt her forever.

 _Ghosts with a negative age_ , she thought, staring out the window as they drove towards Arlington.  Dave hadn’t said he was taking her to his place, but he turned away from Georgetown and headed east; if they were going back to Quantico they would have taken I-395 instead of 66.  Instead of protesting, Emily relaxed back into her seat and watched the sky.  He was making no secret of the fact that he wanted to be there for her-- _I’m all in_ , he’d said, and that wasn’t ambiguous in the least.  And Emily, for her part, wanted him there.  She wanted Dave Rossi at her side, especially if Hotch wasn’t going to have her back, because Rossi was the most capable man she knew, and her attraction to him had long ago blossomed into a deeper feeling.

Mucci greeted her enthusiastically, wagging his entire back end and licking at her cheeks before Dave called him down.  Emily laughed and hugged Mucci, grateful for such open, uncomplicated affection.  She’d always wanted a dog, but her mother thought they were dirty and Emily hadn’t thought her lifestyle would be fair to any sort of animal.  She barely managed to keep houseplants alive.

Dave fixed her a vodka tonic without asking and showed her to the guest suite.  Then he left her alone.

She curled into the queen bed, feeling empty and exhausted under the fluffy green duvet.  The acrid aftertaste of the quinine curled at the back of her throat until she thought she would throw up.

In her pajamas she went to the den and poured herself a second drink, adding more vodka than Dave had.  When the glass was empty she knocked on his bedroom door and pushed it open.  He was lying awake in bed, his gaze steady on hers.

Because her life had been so many cliches--the poor little rich girl, the unwed girl in trouble, the wild child, the crack agent--she refused to hide behind another cliche.  They didn’t have sex; she didn’t pour her careening emotions into a night of passion.

Instead she curled in his arms and he stroked her hair and told her about the trip he wanted to take to Italy some day.  It involved Venice and Florence and Sicily and not a single word about the Eternal City.  Emily informed him that, mother country aside, Spain was a better choice for travel abroad, and whispered that Cordova had been the best place she had ever lived before Washington.

 _It isn’t about the place_ , Dave murmured, his breath tickling her ear.  _It’s about the people_.

 _Only here_ , Emily replied.  _Only now_.

When she woke in the morning, there was a cup of coffee steaming on the bedside table.  Dave was in his study, already on the phone with someone he knew, someone he said could help them.  She could hear his voice through the open door, and she realized she had found somewhere she wouldn’t mind staying.

***

She was aware of what her mother would think if she knew what Emily wanted more than anything in the world.  Sometimes it almost was funny; Emily had everything a modern woman could want--the clothes, the career, the respect of her peers.  She was good at her job and she found fulfillment in it.  She carried a gun and represented the federal government and had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

 _You would want to give all that up to have babies?_ her mother would say.  Her tone would be the one of polite incredulity that had made heads of states offer concessions they’d never meant to give.  Emily had grown much more resistant to it over the years, but she still hated hearing it.

No, Emily didn’t want to ‘give all that up’.  She wanted to have it all.  She wanted the career and the husband and the children and the dog and even the damn picket fence.  And if she needed to take a leave of absence from the Bureau to raise her children, she would consider it.  She didn’t want to drop everything, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to put her career ahead of her children.

Of course, the point was moot unless she fell in love with a man who wanted children.  And the way things were looking in her life right now, she didn’t think that was going to happen.

***

When Emily was thirty-nine, her father died.

Pancreatic cancer.  The diagnosis too sudden, his decline too swift.  He’d written her letters that arrived in her mailbox for weeks after his death.

Dave tried to come with her.  Even as he dropped her at the terminal for her flight to Kansas City, he said he would leave his car right here right now if she wanted him to.  Hollow inside, dry-eyed, Emily just shook her head and turned to the skycap.

The team came to the funeral, Hotch’s expression grim, Dave’s bewildered.  JJ hugged her tightly and whispered that she would come stay if Emily wanted her to.  Morgan kissed her cheek and promised to take care of all her paperwork.  Reid and Garcia both hugged her, the one awkwardly and the other protectively.  Hotch shook her hand.

Dave didn’t even try to touch her.  He held her gaze with his and said nothing.

Emily’s mother thanked them all for coming and expressed gratitude that Emily had such a caring team of coworkers.  Emily knew she saw the expression on Dave’s face, the way he watched Emily openly, the way Emily tried not to be caught watching him back.  Not much slipped past her mother, either.

 _They’re alike in some way_ , Emily thought, watching Dave accept a glass from someone.  _Something in me is moved to make them each happy, and nothing in me is capable of doing that_.

Emily went home alone.

***

Three weeks after her father’s funeral, she started turning her phone off at nights.  She couldn’t take the constant stream of sympathy from her friends, nor Dave’s gently persistent calls.  She heard from Hotch about it, just once, after she missed a call about a case and Reid had to come to her loft to get her.

When she dissolved into tears in Hotch’s office, he got up and rested a hand on her shoulder.  He just stood there until she was done, not speaking, not moving, simply touching her shoulder as if to show he was there.  When the storm was over, he wordlessly handed her his handkerchief.

She still had it.  She kept meaning to give it back, but it was the only gesture of sentiment she could ever remember seeing from her unit chief, and something in her clung to it.  She couldn’t make her mother happy; she couldn’t make Dave happy; but something about her had generated a spark of affection in Aaron Hotchner.  It was a not inconsiderable claim to fame.

A month and a half after her father’s funeral, JJ showed up on her doorstep with a bottle of wine and a tub of Chunky Monkey.  She talked about her sister’s suicide, how lost it had made her feel.  She assured Emily that eventually she would think of her father without pain.

Seven weeks after her father’s funeral, Spencer came by with a batch of cookies.  Emily had taught him to bake during her second year with the team, while Spencer was making his amends to the people he had hurt.  Sometimes, when Emily spent time with him, she imagined that her baby had been a son instead of a daughter.  Spencer was older than her child would have been, but he inspired protectiveness and love in a similar way.

Morgan and Garcia never treated her any differently.  Garcia had lost both her parents, Morgan his father; Emily appreciated that they’d never tried to make a connection between them because of it.  Garcia had loved her parents deeply and gone off the rails when they were stolen from her.  Morgan had lost his father and lost his way, seeking out a father figure who had ripped his innocence from him.  Emily had loved her father resentfully, distantly, and had shown it only by adopting his drink of choice.  She didn’t feel she was worthy of any sympathy from people who had loved their parents properly.

Two months after her father’s funeral, Rossi showed up on her doorstep with a bottle of Stolichnaya and a six-pack of tonic water.  He didn’t say anything, just looked at her.  Emily swung her door wider and let him in.

They drank the entire bottle of Stoli.  Eventually Emily began talking: about how she’d decided against being a translator because her father felt so stifled in his career; about how she’d picked up vodka as a way to piss off her mother; about how her father didn’t join them when they moved from Moscow to Riyadh.  Dave just listened, sipping his drink and pouring them more whenever either of them ran out.  He didn’t invite himself to stay.  In fact, he had his phone out to call a cab when Emily curled her hand around his arm and drew him back to the bedroom.

They didn’t have sex that night either.  Dave kissed her softly, like rainfall against her eyelids, brows, cheekbones, nose.  When his lips finally found hers, the room was spinning from a combination of drink and desire.  Dave had wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close so her butt was tucked against his thighs.  In his arms, Emily felt treasured, protected...more than that, she felt _known_.  Dave knew her, knew everything about her, and he still wanted to be here.  Finally Emily allowed herself to admit that she wanted him to be here, too.

They slept.

***

When Emily was forty she woke up in David Rossi’s arms after a night of vodka tonics and volatile memories.

When Emily was forty-one she let David Rossi put his mother’s diamond on her finger and ask her to marry him.

When Emily was forty-two she bore her first full-term child; she named him Jeremy Thomas, after her father and Dave’s, and they promptly began calling him JT.

When Emily was forty-three she helped catch the Des Moines Devil, a man who had terrorized the city and surrounding areas for half a decade.

When Emily was forty-four she had her second full-term child, a daughter named Rosemarie Elizabeth, after Dave’s mother and her own.

When Emily was forty-five she had everything.  
  



End file.
